Unfortunately, that's all you need to become a billionaire in this country (besides a massive inheritance).
Every subsidy and tax credit Tesla ever got was earned through fraud and deception.
When Teslas crash on self-driving mode, they turn off self-driving mode nanoseconds before the crash so the driver can be blamed.
Elon literally purchased the title of "Founder" from the actual founder of Tesla.
He got sued into buying Twitter after trying to back out, and now acts like it was always his master plan.
Emerald mines? What emerald mines.
Rocket explosion? It was supposed to do that, look at all my engineers clapping and cheering knowing they'll be fired if they don't.
Nobody wants to pay for a checkmark? Of course they do, look at all the check marks he's buying for them.
This man's entire career has been him screaming "I'm not owned, I'm not owned, you're owned." And it works. Because capitalism is the exact opposite of a meritocracy.
If I went back in time to the early 90s and told younger me that Damien Knight had nothing on 2020s real life versions, younger me wouldn't believe it.
For real, a lot of evil secret plots in Shadowrun are just day to day business for contemporary billionaire vampires and even when their secret evil shit is exposed :epstein: ... nothing happens to any of them and they keep on keeping on.
Just imagine how bleak a Shadowrun campaign with a 2020s understanding of corporate hegemony would be, @LGOrcStreetSamurai : "We got the paydata, chummers! Now we can show the press what Fuchi is up to..."
"Oh drek, Fuchi's most popular sponsored influencers are doing reaction takes to the paydata. They're saying Fuchi's medical experiments on d-word children are based, actually." :heated-gamer-moment:
It it weren't so upsetting that'd be rad as hell plot twist. Great narrative hook tbh.
"Turns out the Illuminati is just Capitalism."
Usually one of them is picked to be the fall guy, ala Bernie Madoff I like to think that Epstein was the Madoff of the elite billionaire pedophile world.
I agree with you. It's what we don't know about for sure that is almost certainly worse and even more widespread. :doomer:
And when the fall guy goes down the stupid public is like "oh okay, problem solved!" and the show goes on behind the scenes.
They're so smug and arrogant that they can be outright sloppy and do sloppy shit like the "suicide" shenanigans with :epstein: too.
It's not enough to have a fall guy. Need to have a bumblefucking where all the actual surveillance data is mysteriously lost, both in the prison cell and on the island. :sus: